Mike's Bike Blog

Belterra is a closed course curcuit race in the Belterra subdivison on the outskirts of Austin off of highway 290. Somehow I thought signing up for 2 races would be a good idea. I took advantage of the second race for $10 option as I signed up for the Cat 5 and the 35+ 4/5 race. The Cat 5 race started at 8am for 40 minutes followed up with a 40 minute break before heading out for the 50 minute 4/5 race. My plan for the first race was to just sit in as much as possible and to conserve the legs for the 4/5 race which I suspected would be a lot faster. My goal for the races was to show up and get through them unskathed to get my last 2 races as a Cat 5 racers.

2010 Course
From the start the course goes on a slight uphill and features a larger hill before making a 180 and heading down. So returning back down to the start area is a slight down hill. At the start there's a right turn with a little straight away before a short steep hill where the finish is. Right after the uphill finish is a 2nd 180 degree turn. Don't get me wrong when I say hills, at no time in either of the 2 races did I shift to the small ring, the course is a big ring course.

Cat 5 Race
The race started with around 50 racers on a brisk morning. By the time we reached the big hill at the first 180 turn the pack of 50 was starting to string out a bit. From that point on a group of 20 stayed together. A few riders tried to get away but nothing would stick, as soon as we would get on the downhill stretch heading back it would get chased down. Zach Horne (Austin Cycle Camp) gave a go and attacked on the big hill.  I jumped on his wheel but as we rounded the 180 turn at the top I could see that the entire pack was right there and it would be caught on the down hill section. I shut it down as Zach got a little gap. As I suspected he was caught around the 1KM mark for the lap.

One observation for the race on the uphill section the pace would slow down to 18-20 mph, but on the downhill people would let their carbon wheels spin faster and try to hammer it. I suspect if one would have attacked on the uphill stretch some damage could have been done.  At the very least the pack of 20+ would have been broken up. I contemplated giving it a go but decided to just sit in and conserve as much as I could.

I stuck with my plan and on the last lap just hung in the back staying out of the way as not to get caught up in any crashes. In the end I finished 17th. For this race my average power was 22 watts below my FTP.

Between races I went back to my car, ate a banana and refueled up. I felt pretty good and my average power for the 40 minutes was typical of some of the 40 minute SST intervals I've been doing once a week. I made a huge error between races however. I didn't adequately warm up again before the 4/5 race. All I did was ride down to the staging area, everything felt good so I assumed I was warmed up from the 1st race.

35+ 4/5 Race
I had 3 other Southwest Cycle Sport teammates in this race. Peter told me to stick to his wheel if I got into trouble as I wasn't sure how long my legs would hold up for a 2nd race. From the start I was right on his wheel, but as we left I was already in difficulty and wasn't able to hold his wheel. I soon found myself at the back as we made our way through the 1st 180 turn. Not a good place to be and then the inevitable I was off the back. It took 2 laps to get my legs back and then I had to objectives. To pick off as many riders as I could and to make sure I didn't get lapped.

I slowly made my way through small groups of riders that were dropped from the main pack. There were 2 Shama riders that I caught up to but I couldn't shake them on the downhill section, they go flying by me on the downhill of the big hill and then I'd catch on at some point before the next hill. I'd pass them on the uphill and would pull all the way to the 180 turn back down. We played this game for the remaining laps, we caught and passed several riders. Somewhere along the way a Toyota rider latched on with us. We finished out the race with this route, we even lapped a few riders as well. I am aware that for me to pull on the uphill section which seemed to be into the wind was not a good idea. However I had my reasons, when we would get on the uphill section the pace would slow down, this was allowing the main pack to get miles into us and I did not want to get lapped. So I would move to the front and keep the pace up. In the end I finished 37th. For the 50 minutes I averaged 20 watts below my FTP, the Normalized Power was a few watts above my FTP.

That should conclude my Cat 5 racing as I applied for a Cat 4 upgrade. Not sure how long it takes to get the upgrade, hopefully I'll have it in time for the next race. I'm debating Walburg or Pacebend. When I got home and looked at the power file for the 2 races something caught my eye. The average power for the cat 5 race which I stated was 22 watts below my FTP and falls into the wattage that I hold for 40 minutes for a SST interval the normalized power was a lot higher than what I was expecting. NP was 308 watts, this leads me to believe my FTP has risen.